Environmental sociology and the sociology of natural resources have become two established research areas in the United States with distinct institutional origins, research themes, and theoretical ...

Seeing the Forest for the Trees: A Bibliometric Analysis of Environmental and Resource Sociology

In this commentary, we highlight some of the strengths of the bibliometric analysis conducted by Qin et al. that examines the relationships between environmental and natural resource sociologies th...

The Forest in the Future: A Response to Seeing the Forest for the Trees

Qin and colleagues’ paper “Seeing the Forest for the Trees: A Bibliometric Analysis of Environmental and Resource Sociology” revives a thought-provoking conversation about relationships between env...

Regenerating Scholarly Ecologies: Thoughts on Seeing the Forest for the Trees

Seeing the Forest for the Trees Sequel I: An Extension of the 1985–2017 Bibliometric Analysis of Environmental and Resource Sociology

Seeing the Forest for the Trees Sequel II: An Exploratory Bibliometric Analysis of the Chinese Environmental and Resource Sociology/Social Science Literature

The sociology of natural resources and the environment constitutes a major field of inquiry in the research on human–environmental interactions. A constructive debate and dialogue on the relationships between environmental sociology (ES) and the sociology of natural resources (SNR) began at the 2000 International Symposium on Society and Resource Management (ISSRM) in Bellingham, Washington. Frederick Buttel argued that the two subdisciplines had different subject matters, levels of analysis, spatial focuses, theoretical orientations, policy relevance, and interdisciplinary commitments. These distinctive tendencies have been widely accepted in environmental and natural resource social science but have not been systematically analyzed. The primary objective of this research is to conduct an empirical test of Buttel's differentiating criteria through a systematic review of sample American sociological journal articles published in 2000 and 2014. The multivalue qualitative comparative analysis revealed that there was no clear-cut divide between the two subfields regarding the combinations of empirical research characteristics, while the general tendencies within both of them became more diverse over time. The overall lack of empirical research evidence for rigid ES–SNR distinctions also indicates that there is more potential than typically realized to build an integrative environmental and resource sociology in the American context and beyond.

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Fifteen Years after the Bellingham ISSRM: An Empirical Evaluation of Frederick Buttel's Differentiating Criteria for Environmental and Resource Sociology

Elizabeth Achuff

Papers

Fifteen Years after the Bellingham ISSRM: An Empirical Evaluation of Frederick Buttel's Differentiating Criteria for Environmental and Resource Sociology